Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) – Remember the time you would wait for your favorite song to play on the radio and try to catch and record it on air with the cassette tape?
How about spending hours copying albums just to create the perfect mix?
For someone who tried to do that back in the day was surely a huge personal event.
The cassette tape filled with your favorite songs was such a big part of everyday life that it was hard to imagine living without it back then.
We also recall that dreadful moment when the cassette player would suddenly chew up the magnetic tape. Very carefully, you try to get it out of the machine, untangle the knots, and gently rewind it using a pen.
Most of us who are old enough to have grown up with the tape revolution certainly have various fond memories with this technology.
The tape cartridge usually contained music, but for homesick Filipinos working abroad, the cassette tapes had another purpose.
For Jasmin Albert, the only thing that would stand out in her memory about the cassette tape was how her father, who, instead of writing, spent his free time recording voice messages.
Instead of favorite albums, their tapes, which they get at least every two weeks, contained recorded audio messages created by her father, who used to work in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s.
Albert, 46, shares how excited she was every time the tapes arrive.
“I always thanked the mailman and was delighted to see him. Because I knew he had the tapes from my dad,” she said.
The practical and effective use of recorded tapes sent through the postal office served as one of the early communication tools of Overseas Filipino Workers with their families and friends in the Philippines.
